Tag Archives: digital literacy

Defining Digital Literacy

14 Jun

What is digital literacy? The term has been rising in visibility since 2009 but it has been used quite differently by a variety of stakeholders including policy makers, educators, and business and technology professionals. Next week, at the American Library Association’s annual conference, I’ll be moderating a discussion about four distinct but interrelated definitions and and uses of this important term. Sharing ideas with me will be Judy Kleinberg of the Knight Foundation, Roseanne Cordell, a librarian at Indiana University South Bend, and Laurel Felt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.

Depending on what group of people you talk to, the term ‘digital literacy’ might suggest one or more of these meanings. Which of these definitions are most (and least) useful to your work? For school, academic or public librarians, which of these terms is most relevant? For those in K-12 education, which do you focus on? And for technology educators, where do you focus? Funders and policymakers, which ones are most likely to resonate with decision makers in local, state and national government?

Computer Skills and Access Issues. Having broadband access and knowing how to use the Internet enable full participation in society. For some, basic keyboard and mouse skills are essential skills while others may benefit from a greater understanding of file management and browsers. For example, websites like DigitalLiteracy.gov emphasize the value of using the Internet to find a job, create a resume and for career exploration.

Issues of Authorship. People are creating and sharing more than ever. The concept of digital literacy reflects the growing importance of user-generated content and the changing role of authorship in a digital age. Digital literacy programs like YouMedia empower people with easy access to powerful tools of expression and communication using social media, images, language, music, sound, and interactivity.

Issues of Representation.  How do you decide what to believe? Librarians who value information literacy note the important skill of being able to evaluate the credibility of information sources. Credibility assessment websites like Politifact and FactCheck.org offer an examination of the relationship between the symbol and the thing symbolized. Determining what’s more accurate or less accurate (or what a “quality” source is) is a judgment about issues of representation.

Online social responsibility. How do people learn to integrate ethics in both their online and offline lives? Many people have real concerns about how people behave in online social relationships. The immediacy and instantaneousness of digital media may promote cyberbullying, sexting, disrespect for copyright, privacy violations and inappropriate information sharing. Groups like Common Sense Media provide guidance for helping young people develop the knowledge they need to make appropriate choices about how to manage their digital life.

If you’re coming to the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, please join us to discuss the concept of digital literacy in what is sure to be a dynamic, lively and provocative discussion. If you can’t attend the event, please follow and contribute to the conversation through Twitter with our hashtag, #digilit12.

Saturday, June 23
4:00-5:30
Anaheim Convention Center
Room 206B

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The Paradox of Being Mean

1 Mar

How refreshing to see my alma mater, Harvard Ed School, welcome Lady Gaga to campus to launch the Born this Way Foundation, dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a braver, kinder world. It looks like they’re developing a youth media organization, complete with the now de rigeur traveling “Born to be Brave” bus!

Of course, it will take more than a bunch of smart teens with a bus and foundation money to address the challenges faced as young people discover the power, pleasures and paradoxes associated with “being mean.” Adolescents are developmentally focused on taking risks, pursuing experience for the sake of experience, and seeking out novelty, complexity, and intense situations. Engaging in meanness and stupidity – and discovering the complicated consequences – is part of the way we grow up.

The Thrill of Novelty and Unpredictability. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to acquire social power. Unfortunately, among some teens, one quick and easy way to gain social power is to watch or create a drinking video. There are thousands of them online. Several have more than one million page views. These videos feature young people drinking to excess, sometimes with humiliating consequences. A few days ago, Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia sent a letter home to parents informing them about YouTube drinking videos featuring their students.

Controversial online content can be tasteless, gruesome, obscene, emotionally disturbing, full of rage and pain, or just plain bizarre. Videos may feature Holocaust deniers, exhibitionists, and dangerous drivers. You can learn cutting and other forms of self-mutilation by watching online videos. And fight videos are popular online entertainment, which feature children, teenagers, or young adults engaged in real or staged fighting. Almost every high school in America has a fight video online, such as this one from Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  People, young and old, are attracted to novel and unpredictable content like this because of the adrenaline rush of heightened attention that it produces.

Opening Up Conversational Space for Controversy. In order to promote digital and media literacy competencies, educators can open up a respectful and safe conversational space to examine ethical and social issues associated with controversial online content. It’s not easy, however. Lots of teens will shrug off controversial content as no big deal, maintaining a pose of disinterested stoicism to avoid revealing genuine feelings on a complex and controversial topic. Many teens maintain high levels of secrecy involving their online activities and will not admit to exposure to offensive content or participation in problematic behaviors. But I’ve found one way to open up authentic dialogue about controversial online content by discussing a particular type of YouTube video: the online scary maze game pranking videos.

The Pleasure/Power/Paradox of the Prank. Pranking videos can serve as a starting point for launching critical conversations about the complex ethical relationships that exist among users of online social media. Nearly everyone knows somebody who takes delight in playing pranks. The pleasure of the prank can be described by the concept of symbolic inversion, where expressive behavior inverts or contradicts commonly held cultural codes, values, and norms. By inverting power relationships, pranksters gain a form of social power.

I have never met a 12- to 19-year-old who isn’t familiar with this online prank. The video phenomenon began around 2002 when interactive flash videos known as scare pranks or scary mazes began to emerge across the Internet. Upon clicking the link, the viewer is presented with a puzzle game that requires a high level of concentration, only to be disrupted by an ear-piercing scream and ghastly photos from horror films. Scary maze websites were originally shared via e-mail, chat rooms, or instant messages before the advent of YouTube.

A YouTube search on the keywords “scary maze game” displayed more than 48,000 videos (up from 11,000 in 2011!) which generally feature a person who is scared by playing the game. Videos have been created by YouTube users from Spain, France, Germany, Turkey, China, and other countries. The top-ranked video, “Scary Maze Prank–The Original,” has been viewed more than 25 million times! The video features a very young boy playing the maze game on his home computer. When startled by the sound of screaming and a gruesome face dripping with blood, he screams, hits the computer monitor instinctively, and then runs away from the computer, crying uncontrollably in a deeply visceral fear response.

Educators and parents can choose to ignore or engage with young people on this important issue. Learn more about the instructional methods I’ve developed to open up conversational space about controversial videos in Chapter 7 of my new book, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom.

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In-Between Two Worlds: From Print to Digital

24 Jan

This is a version of the presentation I made at the January 22, 2012  “One Book, One State” event which was sponsored by the Rhode Island’s Center for the Book. More than 200 people gathered in a historic church just outside of Providence to hear Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Caleb’s Crossing, a work of historical fiction that brings readers into the life of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University — in the year 1665.

I’ve been reading a lot more on my iPad these days. Reading online has some tiny frustrations: I miss the cover art and pagination of a printed book. But there are some deep pleasures. For example, I love the ability to highlight a digital text and then share my highlights with other readers. I love the “swish” movement of turning digital pages, I admit. Highlighting a moving, lyrical passage (and discovering that hundreds of others have identified it too) makes me feel connected to a community of readers.

From a scholarly point of view, however, we don’t know much about online reading. We know it can be different in many ways from reading from a printed page. This topic inspires my great curiosity, which is one of the many reasons why I’ve picked up my life and my family to come to the University of Rhode Island to serve as the Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media. I am relishing the opportunity to work with distinguished scholars and practitioners to create a new kind of communication school, developing innovative interdisciplinary programs that enable us to figure out how to help people acquire the new competencies required for full participation in contemporary life.

As I read Caleb’s Crossing on my iPad, I couldn’t help but have a highly personal response to this remarkable coming-of-age novel which offers readers a close-up exploration of the state of in-betweeness. It’s a major theme of the novel. We feel this state of mind as we see the young Native American boy, Caleb, encounter the strange world of the English settlers, and through the novel’s narrator, Bethia, the minister’s daughter, who gains insight on the intense beauty of the natural and spiritual world through her interactions with the Wampanoag natives of Martha’s Vineyard in the 1600s.

The state of in-betweeness is personally relevant to me. I’ve been living with it for many months, as I have anticipated the move from my beloved urban lifestyle in Philadelphia to a new life in Rhode Island, where the waves and the natural world are close at hand.  Reading the book helped me see with precision the exquisiteness of the state of being in-between. As Geraldine Brooks has captured it, it represents a place of possibility for both Caleb and Bethia as their encounters with the “other” create opportunities for deepening their personal and social identity.

Having a personal response to literature like this is certainly among the most profound joys of my life. It happens when people can not only decode and comprehend the little black squiggles, but when they feel deeply engaged in the reading process. Having a personal response to literature demands a confident stance toward reading. I’m lucky to be an empowered reader.

But I’m aware of the fact that many people never get to experience this pleasure. There are far too many reluctant readers in our society today. Too many people grow up today seeing reading as merely a chore, another set of hoops they must jump through on the way to graduation. Lots of people – and perhaps some here today – feel the urge to blame the iPad, the videogame, and the TV for this situation. But there’s no point to that.

Today, it’s more important than ever to stop the either-or thinking that pits print media in opposition to  digital media. In fact, the world of mass media, popular culture and digital media can help engage readers and promote intellectual curiosity. One example of this is work of filmmaker Anne Makepeace, whose film, We Still Live Here, offers insight on the experience of contemporary Wampanoag people who reconnect to their cultural heritage by reviving their native language. Digital media is not the enemy of print reading. Educators, librarians and authors — and ultimately all citizens– must recognize and exploit the many synergies that exist among the various types of new literacies that are emerging today.

In many respects, we are –all of us– living at a time of historic in-betweeness, as the world has shifted from a print-centered cultural environment to an increasing digital world. We may mourn the impending loss of wandering the stacks, cracking open the cover of a new book, feeling the weight of it in the hand. Yet we find ourselves surprised and pleased by the thrill of using new tools and technologies for the transformative practices of reading and writing. Living with iPads, e-books and digital media, I’m intensely aware of how many people are out there for me to discover and learn from. Like Caleb and Bethia, I relish the sense of possibility of self-discovery that results from being in-between the print and digital worlds.

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Reflections from an English Major

22 Sep

Back in the day, when people debated about what to call this new enterprise, this practice of engaging learners in noticing, analyzing, reflecting on, and composing in response to their own mediated culture, I was deeply torn about whether it should be called “media literacy” or “media education.” I opted for the latter for many major initiatives (including the Harvard Institute on Media Education and, of course, the Media Education Lab). Some readers will remember the vociferous 1990s debates we had as the discourse community sorted out what we meant, exactly, by terms like “critical analysis” and “authentic audiences” and “autonomy.”

But “literacy” has been the most problematic and slippery term of all. As an undergraduate, I was a double major in English and Film/Video, of course. I was (and still am) enamored with documentary film and the editing process. Deeply connected to the practice of reading. A lover of words. I brought to this work a deep sense of the connectedness between reading and writing in relationship to the many different symbol systems, genres and forms of expression that are part of our culture.

But at a very critical period in my life, a mentor invited me to consider the long-term potential impact of my work in K-12 education, encouraging me to reflect on whether I would be OK if reading films replaced the practice of reading books. Impossible, I remember thinking. But it’s an issue that can still keep me up at night. Today, as I struggle to get my undergraduates to read, it’s becoming more central to my sense of professional identity as a teacher. For in the zero sum game that is education, more time with one form of expression displaces time spent with something else. And since each media form demands particular kinds of attentional and cognitive skills that are unique to the medium, and different media genres require more sets of specialized skills, I’m right to reflect on how my teaching practices support (or supplant) the particular values associated with reading. I deeply care that people continue to value poetry, for example, and short stories, and drama; I want to explore how the use of new media and technologies can nurture and support this process. As an eternal optimist, I love how T.S. Eliot invites me to embrace how the creative individual makes, destroys and remakes the world through life and through art:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others…)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot, “The Four Quartets”

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PVK 2010: Flash mob video games

13 May

When flash mobs — impromptu gatherings often coordinated through social media — began popping up in Center City Philadelphia, many media outlets characterized the mobs in a negative light, focusing on vandalism and other consequences of youth congregating en masse in public places. Though there was some validity to claims of vandalism, there was not a major effort in local or national news reporting to find youth perspectives on the issue.

Russell Byers Charter School technology coordinator John Landis discussed this issue with his 4th through 6th grade students in Powerful Voices for Kids last summer, who had a range of complicated feelings and opinions. He facilitated students’ creation of video games to express their own takes on the flash mobs in Philadelphia. By using game design as a form of expression, students were able to explore a variety of points of view, including teenagers, siblings of flash mob participants, teachers, and police officers.

After planning their games on paper and discussing the role of chance, choice, and game design in constructing media messages, students designed their interactive scenarios and games on MIT’s Scratch software. To play a few of these games for yourself, check out the group’s student website.

Here’s one example of a student video game by Ahmir and Marquise:

Learn more about this project

NBC-10 sent a small news crew to film the students making their video games. After the piece was edited and aired, students discussed how they felt they were represented in the news. Though students were flattered and excited, they also noticed that footage of them served as B-roll for the newscaster’s script, despite several of them granting interviews to explain the project. Discussion of the news piece was a great way to reflect on the work they’d done and what messages they wanted to convey to an audience themselves.

EDIT: Also be sure to check out an article on the flash mob video game project by Emily Bailin at Spot.us.

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